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Knock-on Effect NSW Cup - Eels Team

oldmancraigy

Coach
Messages
12,011
Everyone keeps posting like we had a choice about the options. Who says we did.

Basic tenant of making contracts: they need to be signed by both parties.
Refusal of terms would result in not signing. We weren't "forced" to include POs, we had the choice.

However, if Moses wouldn't sign without an option to get out and test the market at a later date - yes. I would give him that option

For Dunster? Lane? Matterson? Brown? (Etc) - nah.
 

oldmancraigy

Coach
Messages
12,011
I actually think giving Blaize Talagi a PO without even playing a FG game is more of a bonehead decision then giving one to Dylan.

Has anyone explained how we got conned with that one.

Some lunatic will trot out the commonly used rhetoric that we got a discount before the option. Pure fiction and fantasy. Might be true, but highly unlikely given it isn't so in other sports where salary is revealed. And is logically incoherent on so many fronts (eg. why would the player take less for one sugar hit high? There would be much easier ways to boost earnings through incentives, no PO needed.)
 

Pazza

Coach
Messages
10,283
Some lunatic will trot out the commonly used rhetoric that we got a discount before the option. Pure fiction and fantasy

I think the blaize option really disproves this theory

How much of a discount was the club going to get on a SG ball player lol every dollar counts when you're in the market for a moimoisea or a harper

Good halves are golden in the nrl atm, and this incompetent organisation handed out three POs to 3 of our top four and managed to lose 3 of them.
 

hineyrulz

Post Whore
Messages
155,353
Basic tenant of making contracts: they need to be signed by both parties.
Refusal of terms would result in not signing. We weren't "forced" to include POs, we had the choice.

However, if Moses wouldn't sign without an option to get out and test the market at a later date - yes. I would give him that option

For Dunster? Lane? Matterson? Brown? (Etc) - nah.
“ But but but but but we had no choice”

“Just get it done MON”
 

hineyrulz

Post Whore
Messages
155,353
Some lunatic will trot out the commonly used rhetoric that we got a discount before the option. Pure fiction and fantasy. Might be true, but highly unlikely given it isn't so in other sports where salary is revealed. And is logically incoherent on so many fronts (eg. why would the player take less for one sugar hit high? There would be much easier ways to boost earnings through incentives, no PO needed.)
Especially when you are a young bloke barely on the minimum like Blaize was.

I think I read somewhere Dick Penisiiiiiiii has one as well.
 

Poupou Escobar

Post Whore
Messages
93,273
*was
*came

May as well talk about them in past tense now, as the club has publicly confirmed POs are off the table in the future.
I assume other clubs will keep using them (but not mentioning them in retention announcements) so they are still relevant as a topic of discussion. Every time we fail to retain a player we can speculate whether a PO might have kept him. More money might also have kept him, but clubs need to be mindful of the cap. They can't just keep upping the cash component to keep everyone. It's very exciting.
 

Poupou Escobar

Post Whore
Messages
93,273
Cleary is a 4 time premiership player of course you would give hime whatever he wants to come here..

Even Payne Hass I would offer a PO to buy after 5 years.

Offering POs to current players that have won nothing is a fruitless excersise. Which I think the club has come to realize now.
Payne Haas has won nothing. But also, current players are probably the only ones you'd give a PO to, because you know if they fit into the group. Haas is a great player but he might arrive and make a merkin of himself. In that case he might not be worth what we're paying and we'd want him gone as soon as his contract ended.
 

Poupou Escobar

Post Whore
Messages
93,273
I will say it again in a different way

In 2022 if we only signed Brown up for 3 seasons would Either of Blaize or Sanders have left?

Both would have had a pathway to being an NRL 6 or 7. As Browns not there till possibly 2032
"Hey Blaize/Ethan, Dylan Brown is one of our best players and every merkin at the club loves him, but could you just sign this extension in case he leaves when his contract ends in two years? And because we need to put so much money aside for him and Moses, there's not a lot left over for backup halves, so you'll have to re-sign very cheap. If Drown does leave, we'll look at giving you an upgrade."

Sure it makes us feel smart to point out risks that the experts MUST SURELY HAVE OVERLOOKED, but you have to understand, even the dogshit dumbest NRL administrators would run rings around the 'experts' second guessing their decisions on social media. The Tigers have won three straight spoons. lol @ Shane Richardson lololol right? But they have won 14 games in that time. If a bunch of LU merkins were running that club they might've won zero games ffs. By year three they might have fewer than 17 merkins on the books and no cap space to fill the 30.
 
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Poupou Escobar

Post Whore
Messages
93,273
Yeh, sort of. Having multiple POs exercisable in the same year is not great portfolio management. Considered alone, my only issue with the Brown PO was that he had until May to exercise it (and that makes it much harder to organise a replacement for 2026). If that decision had to made last November (or even December) I'd have zero problem with it.
But then would also be far less valuable to the player, meaning it would have been less useful as a bargaining chip back in 2022.
 

Poupou Escobar

Post Whore
Messages
93,273
Everyone keeps posting like we had a choice about the options. Who says we did.

Whilst we are playing hypothetical, if both Moses and Brown were going to walk if NOT for that PO structure, is everyone saying we should have refused and watched them walk out in 2022 ?
Even more to the point, what if they wanted more money if we couldn't offer the POs and that money just wasn't available under our presumably arse tight salary cap at the time. Given we are shedding players rather than trying to keep a grand final team together, we are obviously under far less cap pressure now than we were back then. It makes sense that we can just offer more cash in 2025 and beyond rather than resorting to player options.
 

Poupou Escobar

Post Whore
Messages
93,273
Of course we had a choice on the options but after we gave them the option we didn't have a choice it was all in the players hands
Which is why it's something valuable we can offer the player instead of more cash ffs. It's a thing that had value to the player that we were able to give him in exchange for something valuable to the club. Whatever that value is (essentially a discount), the media and fans will never know what it was, but the club and player/manager do. That value was taken by the club at the time of signing the contract. It's not in the news. Then the player has a valuable thing that they can exercise later, which did eventually end up in the news, years later. Can we take it as given that the PO benefits the player and it's not some sneaky gotcha that the club didn't anticipate. If it didn't benefit the player, the club would gain nothing from offering it during negotiations.
Yes they haven't won anything to show they deserve the have the PO take the money we are offering
It depends how much money other clubs were offering back then. To illustrate this, look at Drown's most recent decision with the Knights. He had his existing Eels PO on the table, that if activated, included a future PO. Instead he took a bigger money offer from the Knights because it was worth more to him than the existing contract with us, that included a further PO in the future.
 

Poupou Escobar

Post Whore
Messages
93,273
Some lunatic will trot out the commonly used rhetoric that we got a discount before the option. Pure fiction and fantasy. Might be true, but highly unlikely given it isn't so in other sports where salary is revealed. And is logically incoherent on so many fronts (eg. why would the player take less for one sugar hit high? There would be much easier ways to boost earnings through incentives, no PO needed.)
Look at it as insurance. I pay about 10% of the value of my car every three years. It's not a 'sugar hit', it is a cost I don't like, but which protects me in a worst case scenario. I haven't been in a car crash for 12 years, and I haven't been at fault since sometime in the mid-90s. I still keep paying for full comprehensive insurance. I think my situation is fairly standard.

When I do make my next claim I wonder if the insurance company will freak out and wring their hands over selling me the policy. Absolute witch hunt with merkins running around the office shrieking WhOeVeR sOlD tHiS pOlIcY sHoUlD bE SaCkEd fFs!!!!

Insurance companies benefit by selling policies via the premiums they are paid. Footy clubs benefit by whatever they get in exchange for the PO. If you're going to claim they get no benefit you might as well state that they pay players whatever they ask for with no consideration of the salary cap (or the club's budget).
 

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